Posted on 12/02/2014 2:06:45 PM PST by Red Badger
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to awake on Dec. 6 from the last of its 18 hibernation periods and prepare for its initial approach towards Pluto, which will take place on Jan. 15. The spacecraft is scheduled to come as close as 6,200 miles from the surface of Pluto on July 14, 2015 -- the closest any man-made object has come to the dwarf planet. The mission marks the first visit outside Neptune's orbit to the Kuiper Belt, which consists of Pluto and thousands of objects that have not yet been identified, according to Spaceflight Now, a space news website.
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New Horizons is currently 2.9 billion miles from earth and was launched in January 2006 atop an Atlas V rocket. Pluto at the time was still considered a planet, with scientists later that year voting to demote its status to that of a dwarf planet.
The spacecraft has over the last nine years frequently gone into hibernation for various amounts of time ranging from 36 to 202 days, all of which adds up to five years in total, to help conserve power and allow scientists time to make plans for its exploration in space. It transmits a beep once a week to alert scientists that it is still functioning properly. Once awakened on Dec. 6, New Horizons will transmit radio signals that will reach the Mission's control center, located at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, in about four hours at 9 p.m. eastern time.
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Scientists are hoping that NASA will continue to fund and extend the mission to allow for further exploration.
"The hope is that it will encounter one other Kuiper Belt object," Buckley told ABC News.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The International Astronomical Union applied some rigor to the definition of ‘planet’.
1. Has to have enough gravity to make itself spherical (yes).
2. Has to orbit the sun (yes).
3. Has to have enough mass to clear its orbit of other objects (no)
There are actually bigger ‘dwarf planets’ out there than Pluto. Eris is one of them. Interesting that there was no weight at all as to whether the planetoid in question could hold satellites. Pluto has 5.
They are now called ‘dwarf planets’. Apparently, it is OK to offend planetoids with the pejorative ‘dwarf’. Try that with a ‘little person’.
No matter what they call it I’m really looking forward to seeing those pictures.
Same here. The asteroid thing was pretty cool.
I think we’ve got another thousand years in this solar system. Once we’ve populated and industrialized our solar system as much as we can, then we’ll be ready do reach for distant stars with people. There are quite a few stars and brown dwarfs within 10 light years.
Even if we never find a way around the light speed problem it doesn’t mean we can’t go, we just wouldn’t be able to do it at light speed. Within 1000 years we’ll probably be able to keep people in stasis for long periods. In 1000 years we’ll be able to achieve a considerable percentage of light speed. In 1000 years we’ll be able to build the really big ships we need. In fact we will probably do all of those things much sooner than 1000 years from now but I doubt we’ll be try to send men beyond our solar system for at least 1000 years.
And then planned planethood came along......
LOL
That really blew me away. How they landed on that wildly spinning object more or less intact seems impossible.
1000 years is probably optimistic, given that it has been over 45 years since we first landed a man on the moon (a feat that still no other country has managed) and it will likely be at least another 50 years (probably closer to 100) before we land anyone on Mars.
There may not be anyone to play “Good Morning Sunshine” to it in nine years.
“Send More Chuck Berry”
I'm optimistic.......I hope you get a chance to talk with a 100 year old senior who has seen everything from a prairie home with no running water until her father drilled a well with a post and a mule, lived thru the great "dust bowl" and now has a smart phone.
The accomplishments we have seen in technology this past 100 years will only multiply geometrically in the next 100 years........I would give anything to see what life will be like then............
If the police, national guard and FD weren’t there, that it how Ferguson would have looked.
Pluto has 5 moons... I thought it was just Charon
Those unknown objects in the Kuiper Belt could be Easter Island-type heads!!!!
In his novel 2312, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson describes using hollowed-out asteroids, roughly 9 kilometers in length as "terrariums" powered by engines and containing fully self-sufficient towns and thousands of occupants inside them for the real long hauls.
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